I’m excited about the cover story I wrote for the latest issue of Outside’s Go.
It’s a profile of Alessandro Benetton, heir to the Benetton empire and a Harvard Business School-educated economic savant, but what’s so inspiring about Benetton is his true commitment to socially responsible business. He studied with Michael Porter at HBS in the late 80s early 90s and told me that it was right about this time that Porter began to first introduce the idea of an “ethical” business. Sure, there are places to point fingers at Benetton (the company got bad press a few years back over a native lands’ conflict in Patagonia) but when a $3 billion dollar company pushes for a commitment to social responsibility alongside financial success, it creates ripples that make a difference on the ground. The first big salvo, which I cover in the Go story, is Benetton’s commitment to Yousou N’Dour’s Birima micro-credit program. This is where Alessandro Benetton is changing the company, actually putting big cash into a philanthropic system instead of simply using socially jarring images in stylized ads. The collaboration is called Africa Works, and Benetton has put the full force of its marketing machine behind the project with an ad campaign that includes engaging images of Sengalese workers. Micro-credit, first made popular by Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank, provides small, low-to no-interest loans to poor aspiring entrepreneurs (fishermen, weavers, farmers, musicians… ), just enough to get them on their feet so they can start creating their own income from their businesses. Not only does it stimulate local economies, micro-loans have an astounding 99-percent repayment rate. And most importantly they are not handouts. They offer a chance at dignity, for people to work to prove themselves, which is why they work. As N’Dour says, “Africa doesn’t want charity. It wants repayable, subsidized loans.”